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Fannie Lou Hamer/Transcript
Transcript An animation shows Tim and Moby playing a board game. The board indicates that you have to buy properties and earn money to win. Tim takes a card from one of the piles. He sighs. TIM: Directly to jail, again. Tim moves his piece on the board. TIM: Either you're cheating, or the game is rigged. MOBY: Beep! Moby puts his hand on his hip and frowns. Tim raises an eyebrow. TIM: Fine. Moby hands Tim a typed letter. Tim reads from the typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Who was Fannie Lou Hamer? From, Maegan. Well, on August 22, 1964, a lot of Americans were asking that same question. That night, they’d turned on the TV to see Hamer on every news program. An animation shows a family watching the news on an old TV set. A woman, Fannie Lou Hamer, is speaking on camera. TIM: She looked like a nice, middle-aged lady—somebody’s mom, or your neighbor. But in her home state of Mississippi, she was well-known as a fierce voting rights advocate. For the past two years, she’d been fighting to get African Americans access to the polls. An animation shows Hamer seated behind a table with a sign that says "Register to vote!" She has a stack of papers next to her. A line of people form in front of the table. TIM: The Constitution said that the right to vote couldn’t be denied due to race. But southern states had found all sorts of ways to get around the law. Stripped of their right to vote, black southerners had no voice in a racist system. Try to fight it, and you faced jail time, intimidation, and violence. An animation shows a black man in line to vote. When he gets toward the front, a large white man in overalls blocks him. The black man holds up a piece of paper that says Article XIV. The white man rips up the paper, and the black man walks away. TIM: Hamer had experienced it all—and that night, she shared her story. It was just a few minutes long, but full of hardship and brutality. Viewers who'd never heard of her before wept. An animation shows Hamer speaking on the TV set in front of the family. The woman watching covers her mouth in shock. TIM: Overnight, she went from being a local activist to a national civil rights leader. An animation shows a newspaper with the headline, "Hamer Floors DNC." MOBY: Beep? TIM: Hamer was born in Mississippi in 1917, the youngest of 20 children. Her grandmother had been enslaved. And her parents, like many descendants of enslaved people, were sharecroppers. An animation shows a young Hamer sitting outside on a porch. She sits next to her grandmother. They are both shelling peas. In the field behind them, people are picking cotton. TIM: A plantation owner rented them farmland in exchange for a share of their crops. But he also charged high rates for tools and other expenses. So like most sharecroppers, they were constantly in debt. An animation shows the plantation owner coming over to Hamer's father, walking a hunting dog. He says something, gives Hamer's father a few coins, then walks away. Hamer's father looks worried. TIM: Fannie Lou had to leave school after 6th grade to help her family in the fields. MOBY: Beep! TIM: As an adult, she earned a position of responsibility on a plantation: She recorded each farmer’s harvest, and tried to get them their fair share. An animation shows Hamer behind a desk. A man drops off a box of sweet potatoes, and Hamer makes a record of it in her notebook. TIM: Then in August 1962, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, visited her church. All around the country, the Civil Rights Movement was heating up. And SNCC was one of the major players. An animation shows a church with some members outside, including Hamer. A man in a tie hands Hamer a pamphlet that says SNCC at the top. TIM: Its student activists trained local community leaders to join the fight. In Mississippi, they focused on registering black voters. An animation shows Hamer holding the pamphlet. On the front it says, "register to vote!" Hamer opens the pamphlet and on the inside, it says "You Can Help!" and "Structure and Leadership." The back of the pamphlet reads "The Future" and shows a black hand shaking a white hand. TIM: They told the congregation they could sweep out racist officials. Hamer was stunned: She didn't even know she had the right to vote! When SNCC asked for volunteers to register to vote, she raised her hand high. An animation shows the inside of the church. A man is speaking at the podium to the members of the church. Hamer raises her hand, along with several other members. MOBY: Beep! TIM: Uh, no, it wasn't that simple. TIM: An angry crowd gathered at the courthouse to meet the 18 volunteers. They tried to scare Hamer and the others from even trying to register. But the volunteers stuck together and made their way in. An animation shows an angry crowd outside the county courthouse. They are yelling and shaking their fists at the volunteers. TIM: Inside the courthouse, the clerk was no more welcoming. He demanded the group pass a test before registering. An animation shows the county clerk inside the courthouse. He is scowling and his arms are crossed. He hands up a test to the volunteers. TIM: They were asked to explain a legal clause about ex facto laws— MOBY: Beep? TIM: Yeah, that was the whole point of literacy tests: to be nearly impossible to pass, so clerks could refuse anyone the right to vote. They could also demand a poll tax, a fee meant to discourage would-be voters. An animation shows a volunteer start to answer the question about ex facto laws, but then pause. An image of a check appears below the test. TIM: No surprise, all the SNCC volunteers failed the literacy test. An animation shows the SNCC volunteers leaving the courthouse with their heads hanging. TIM: On the way home, their bus was stopped by police--they said its yellow color was illegal. Hamer sang to keep the group’s spirits up until they were let go. An animation shows Hamer standing and singing to the other volunteers on the bus. TIM: That night, she was fired from her job and evicted from her home. The plantation owner had heard about her attempt to register. An animation shows Hamer standing outside her home with some clothes stuffed into a suitcase. TIM: A few nights later, someone shot at the house where she was staying. Afraid for her children, Hamer considered leaving town for good. An animation shows Hamer holding her two daughters. A window behind them has been shattered by a bullet. TIM: But she couldn't bring herself to leave the place her parents helped build. She rented a house from a neighbor, and took a job with SNCC. MOBY: Beep! TIM: Hamer's home became a gathering place for volunteers and civil rights leaders. Among them, she stood out: She wasn’t male, young, well-educated, or middle-class. She knew what poor black families endured, because she’d lived it. An animation shows Hamer and a handful of men crowded around her table. TIM: That firsthand experience made her a powerful speaker. She would often break into song to motivate crowds. Before long, she was as well-known for her singing voice as her activism. An animation shows Hamer speaking into a microphone before a crowd. TIM: But her growing influence made her a target for racist attacks. She got threatening letters and phone calls, and her husband lost job after job. Someone even threw a bomb at her house--though luckily, it failed to explode. An animation shows someone watching Hamer enter her home through binoculars. A bomb made inside a glass bottle is lit, but does not explode. TIM: Then in June 1963, Hamer and 6 fellow activists were arrested. They’d tried to eat at a whites-only diner. Local police held them for three days, beating and torturing them. An animation shows Hamer in a jail cell with two men and three other women. A police officer leads a crying young woman back into the cell, and beckons for Hamer to come with him. TIM: Hamer’s kidneys were permanently damaged, and she lost sight in one eye. MOBY: Beep! TIM: Hamer and other activists realized that local authorities weren't going to change unless they were forced to. So in 1964, they started a massive voter registration drive called Freedom Summer. An animation shows Hamer behind the voter registration table again. TIM: It brought hundreds of mostly white college students down to Mississippi. They went door to door registering black voters. An animation shows a handful of young people holding signs that say "Register to vote!" and "End the Literacy Test." TIM: It was dangerous work—three volunteers were murdered in the first week. The nation could no longer ignore what was happening in Mississippi. An animation shows a bunch of televisions in a store window. A news program is airing a program that says "Missing: Call FBI" and shows the faces of 3 young people. Their names are Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner. A crowd forms on the street around the televisions. TIM: For the rest of the summer, stories of beatings and shootings made headlines around the country. Then at the end of August, Hamer and other activists went to Atlantic City, NJ. That was the site of the Democratic National Convention: An animation shows Atlantic City, NJ decked out in patriotic flags. A sign says "Atlantic City Welcomes the Democratic National Convention." TIM: The big event where the party chooses its nominee for President. Each state sends a group of people to cast the official vote. An animation shows the convention with a speaker on a podium and a large crowd. TIM: And no surprise, Mississippi's representatives were all white. An animation shows a group of white men in suits next to the Mississippi sign. TIM: Hamer's group was there to challenge their authority. Since the state excluded black voters, they said, the delegation was illegal. They were Mississippi's true representatives, and they had voter registrations to prove it. An animation shows Hamer speaking out to a crowd in Atlantic City. A group of people are sitting on the ground outside the convention hall. They carry signs that say "Freedom to Vote" and "Seat the MDFP." They also carry signs with images of the young students who were killed in Mississippi. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Their protest caused an uproar, and Hamer was given a slot to speak. An animation shows Hamer sitting down inside the convention hall to give her speech. TIM: Before a national audience, she described what she had endured, simply for trying to vote: being threatened and shot at by fellow citizens; being beaten by the police. She challenged the nation to consider its own values. FANNIE LOU HAMER: Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America? TIM: Her testimony replayed on the news for days. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Hamer and her group weren't seated at the convention. But a year later, President Lyndon Johnson would sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It outlawed all kinds of barriers to voting, like literacy tests and poll taxes. An animation shows President Johnson signing the act, then shaking hands with Martin Luther King, Jr. TIM: And at the Convention in 1968, Hamer was chosen to be an official delegate. She received a standing ovation. An animation shows Hamer speaking at a podium. Cameras flash around her. MOBY: Beep? TIM: Hamer's activism continued way past her prime-time moment. She fought for women’s rights, protested the Vietnam War, and ran for office several times. She founded Freedom Farm, a cooperative to help black farmers climb out of poverty. When she died in 1977, she was buried there. An animation shows Hamer on Freedom Farm, holding a box of sweet potatoes and talking to two men. Her image dissolves, and then an image of her tombstone is shown on the farm. It says: Fannie Lou Hamer. October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977. "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." MOBY: Beep? TIM: Uh… yeah, I guess it is your turn to roll. An animation shows Moby about to take his turn at the board game. He reaches over to pick up the dice when his chest plate pops open. Out pours a huge pile of fake money for the game, plus dice and other cards. TIM: Sigh. Category:BrainPOP Social Studies Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Transcripts